I’m a late-blooming literary dream-chaser.

Writing has always been my refuge. But I didn’t always recognize myself as a writer.

I penciled my first story about a little girl who finds an injured baby bird — then sets it free when it’s ready to fly. Yet it would be years before I flexed my wings.

As a Women’s Studies major at UC Santa Cruz, I was schooled by the silence-breaking essays, poems, and stories of Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, bell hooks, and Sandra Cisneros. Such luminaries awakened my literary sensibilities and compelled me to keep putting pen to paper. 

“You can do and be anything, including a writer,” a professor commented in the margins of a critical essay I wrote in college. But it took two more decades before I claimed that identity — without feeling like an imposter.

I’m Nicole R. Zimmerman (she/her), the person behind Pencil & Pen.

 As a queer Jewish American writer and Gen X feminist still blooming in midlife, I value the power of personal narrative, storytelling, and poetic expression.

"I don’t write about what I know, but in order to find out what I know."

— Patricia Hampl, I Could Tell You Stories: Sojourns in the Land of Memory

In 2012, I earned an MFA at the University of San Francisco, which awarded me a merit scholarship to study creative nonfiction. Slowly I launched my writing career, from small-town reporting to corporate copywriting to seeing my literary work in print for the first time — with a Pushcart nomination.

In 2020 I received a Discovered Award for Emerging Literary Artists, administered by Creative Sonoma and funded, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts. Since then I’ve been working on a memoir titled Just Some Things We Can’t Talk About, a manuscript I aim to publish with a small press.

My writing appears in the New York Times (Tiny Love Stories), Longreads, Sonora Review, Creative Nonfiction, and The Rumpus, among others — nominated for the Pushcart Prize and The Best American Essays series, twice-selected for Memoir Monday, and included in a Longreads reading list. I write on many topics:

  • Family & intimate relationships

  • Pandemic distance

  • Seasonal wildfires

  • Place-based and travel writing

  • Gender-based violence

  • Bodily autonomy and female empowerment

Meet your facilitator: an Amherst Writers affiliate

I offer community-based workshops, encourage playful experimentation, and support artistic self-expression.

Following an intensive 40-hour leadership training I became certified to lead workshops using the Amherst Writers method. In early 2020 I held my first sessions at The Sitting Room — a community library of women’s literature in Sonoma County, California.

Since then I’ve led more than 35 creative writing series on Zoom. Over 75 women have attended my generative writing groups, with many returning to write with me multiple times.

In addition, I've led single sessions with these AWA programs:

  • Monthly Online Writes: general and LGBTQ+ affinity groups

  • Write Around the World: Lit Mag Prompts; Writing As Spiritual Practice; Discovering Your Inner Child; Treasured Objects; etc. 

  • The Power of Story: special workshops for RAINN staff & volunteers who support survivors of sexual violence (co-led with Dr. Mary Simmerling)

I’ve also taught creative writing in after-school programs and trained to become a Poet-Teacher with California Poets in the Schools. 

I enjoy nurturing a supportive space in which everyone feels empowered to add our singular voices to the collective.

Where I’m From

I am from pulpy papaya dripping from my infant chin, Brazilian
Bacon sizzling and Saturday cartoons with my brother in California
Coconut flakes like snow on a chocolate cake baked each year
For my birthday, melted M&M cookies in Nana's Cleveland kitchen.

I am from Shrinky Dinks and Crayolas (magenta and magic mint)
Mourning dove murmurs and cicadas humming in Phoenix heat
Tree forts and swimming in blurred light on summer nights
Saltwater sandals reaching skyward on a swing, still singing.

*This list-poem of my early childhood arose from an AWA exercise offered by George Ella Lyon (via Pat Schneider), based on her poem “Where I’m From.”

Although I spent nearly my first three years in Brazil, I’m a Californian at heart. I was mostly raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and moved to Sonoma County in 2000. 

My wife-partner and I lived on her family farm for 15 years before residing in the river town of Petaluma — part of the ancestral, and present-day, lands of the indigenous Coast Miwok.

A few fun facts:

  • I’m childless by choice, but I’m an auntie to many. I especially adore babies.

  • I’m part of a post-divorce blended family. 

  • I’ve traveled extensively, including 20+ countries. I can speak/read/write basic Portuguese, Spanish, and French, and read some Hebrew. 

  • I used to dance in a samba troupe; now I do Zumba at the gym.

  • I’ve worked as a waitress, nanny, preschool teacher, K–12 educator, teen parent mentor, crisis line worker, and women’s self-defense instructor. 

  • I’ll eat almost anything, but I have an aversion to black pepper.